"Oh, calm yourself! Bissula is a girl about twelve years old--that is--she was in those days. She and a Sarmatian boy brought to Arbor every week the fish her uncle had caught on the northern shore of the lake. And how delightfully she talked! Even her Barbarian Latin sounded sweetly from her cherry-red lips. We became the best of friends. I gave her--she would accept neither money nor costly jewels--trifling articles, especially seeds of fine Gallic fruit and flowers from Garumna for her little garden. She told me strange stories of the gods and fauns in the woods, the nymphs in the lakes and springs here in the country,--but she gave them different names,--and the mountain giants opposite, whose white heads glittered in the sunset light. And I--I--" "You read the 'Mosella' to her, of course!" laughed Saturninus. "Certainly. And the little Barbarian girl showed a better appreciation of it than the great Roman general. It was not the fish that pleased _her_ best--" "I can easily believe it: she had better ones herself, you said just now." "But the descriptions of the vineyards and villas along the river. And when I told her that in my home on the Garumna were far, far handsomer and richer houses, full of marble, gold, bronze, and ivory, adorned with brightly painted walls and mosaics; that I myself owned the most beautiful palaces and magnificent gardens full of leaping water, foreign stags and deer, and birds with sweet songs or brilliant plumage; when I spoke of the deep blue of the sky and the golden light of the sun in the glorious land of Aquitania where almost perpetual summer reigned, she could not hear enough in prose and verse of the splendor of our country and the magnificence and art of our life. Once she clapped her little hands in surprise and delight, exclaiming: 'Oh, father, I should like to see that too. Just one day!' But I had grown so fond of the gay, sweet child that, with a thrill of joy at the thought, I answered: 'Come, my little daughter, not for a day--forever. If your guardian will consent, I will adopt you as my child and take you to Burdigala. How gladly my wife will welcome you! My daughters will treat you as a dear sister. You shall become a Roman maiden!'